Being Witnessed on a Wednesday Morning, and Other Religious Debacles

“Do you know what the meaning of life is?” The man said to me from the other side of my door. He was dressed in his Sunday’s best on this groggy Wednesday morning. The dogs had already tossed the dog version of bad language from my side of the cracked open door outward to his. I eyed the man and his companion up and down subtly, then slipped outside.

“Yes. It is life itself.”

It is May Day.

The man half chuckled, not expecting such a simple explanation. That is the beauty of simple—it is wide open to interpretation. He woke his tablet, pointed the screen in my direction, and began to read a bible quote. The man seemed good intentioned, but there he stood like a brick wall in dress clothes. He was a living, breathing swatch of color in only black and white. There I stood, a living breathing rainbow swatch looking back at him. Rainbows don’t understand brick walls.

That is a rainbow colored Maypole.

As he spoke my mind ran to my neighbor. She stands tall and fierce in the face of the door-to-door preacher. The local Mormons fear her—they have blacklisted her as a trouble maker. She welcomes them with open arms and a friendly smile. She lures them in with a vague sounding question, and then she pounces. Question after question, relentlessly, holding a timid missionary hostage for an hour, grilling away. She takes great pleasure over these debates, and she is always looking for new evangelicals. I should be more like her, I thought. I should be more confrontational.

Confrontation isn’t in my nature. For a brief moment I zeroed back in on his words.

Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.

The man finished his quote and said, “We certainly have done that, don’t you think? But is that really all there is to life? This world is in a terrible state.”

You really can’t argue with that statement. The world has lots of problems, but I could see where this was leading—the Jehovah's Witness Armageddon. The subconscious has this funny way of throwing information into the forefront of the mind at just the right moment, especially in relation to memory of music. And at that moment the song I had heard on the radio the day prior was thrown back into the forefront of my mind.

Living on the edge
You can’t help yourself from falling…

So there I stood looking at the man, but there also was Aerosmith—the music my older siblings were listening to when I was growing up—playing in my head. Steven Tyler was warbling on about end times, until I reached the part the subconscious was looking for:

Something right with the world today
And everybody knows it’s wrong
But we can tell them no, or we can let it go
But I’d rather be hanging on

I’m no Jehovah’s Witness. My idea of hanging on does not involve waiting for god to wipe the earth clean, and preaching about it in the meantime. Thank you for that clarity, subconscious.

May Day grapevine crowns. Nothing says heathen like a grapevine crown.

I looked curiously at the man’s face. He was in his fifties, neatly put together, and had a natural air of kindness, but was undoubtedly a brick wall. His whole-hearted belief was that Armageddon was coming, and that the heavenly army would take over the world, destroying all those who do not follow the creed—which would exclude me. That belief was a little bit insulting, considering he was standing on my doorstep. I twisted my lips in thought. Although it is supposed to be not insulting, because he is here to save me from myself, or, more specifically, from his god. I mulled it over as he flicked off his tablet and met my eyes once more.

“I would love to come back next week and tell you what God has said about the meaning of life.”

The hook. The old help me, help you.

“I’ve got this neighbor,” I said, gesturing down the street. “I think she really needs the word of God.”

God Speed.